


You

by tarysande



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-06 22:45:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16396520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarysande/pseuds/tarysande
Summary: She says, very softly, very gently, “What do you desire?”





	You

The first time Lucifer has Chloe Decker in his bed, she is drunk and sad and angry and he, all too aware how out of his element comfort is.

He doesn’t sleep with her. He doesn’t sleep at all. He stands wrapped in silk and shadows, feeling far too much, not wanting to invade her privacy even by witnessing the way the moonlight caresses the bare skin of her arms and rimes her golden hair with silver against his black sheets.

In the morning, he deflects with humor because his chest aches with some unfamiliar weight both horrific and addictive all at once. And because she’d been too soft in his arms, too vulnerable, and soft isn’t part of his vocabulary—not anymore, not if it ever was.

And perhaps, just a little, because her distress at the very idea of being with him hurts in a way he’s not used to, in a way he’s done everything to avoid since that first great Rejection and the Fall that accompanied it.

  
#

The second time Lucifer finds Chloe in his bed, she’s sleeping wrapped in one of his shirts, the smell of scotch and merriment still lingering in the air. He’s envious—ridiculously envious, damnably envious—of that shirt, of the way it’s allowed to hug every curve, of the way it’s allowed to be hers if she wants it.

And there’s something about seeing her there, vulnerable at rest in the heart of his home, hair a tangle he wants nothing more than to run his fingers through, lips slightly parted like the beginning of a kiss he’s not permitted to give, that brings the truth—unadulterated, without loopholes—to his lips. He knows when she wakes, of course—the pattern of her breath changes, to say nothing of how abominably bad a liar she is—and he’s grateful for the interruption her gift provides him, even if the giving of it makes him far more vulnerable than mere words can.

That she didn’t guess the code was her name pleases and saddens him in equal measure.

He doesn’t sleep with her. He doesn’t sleep at all. Leaving Daniel and Linda in the heaps where they fell smiling into sleep, he brings Chloe a birthday drink, which she accepts with a rueful smile. The dim golden light of his bedroom glints on the necklace at her throat. Her eyes still shine damp with the memory of tears.

When she tries to press the shirt back into his hands the next morning, he waves her away, tells her to keep it. He wonders if she does. Hopes.

#

The third time, Chloe’s perfectly sober, and she walks to Lucifer’s bed without staggering or weeping. She sits, and the only hint she’s not entirely composed is the way her knuckles whiten as she tightens her hands on the edge of the mattress. A deflecting joke burns the back of his throat, though he refuses to speak it. It takes effort not to turn and seek the familiar crutch of a crystal glass overfilled with liquor.

He doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. She’s looking up at him with clear eyes that have seen—that have _seen_ —and have not run away. Her hair is loose, falling in the too-perfect waves that tell him she’s made an effort. For him. For this. She’s wearing red silk—she should always wear red silk—with a neckline low enough to show the necklace he’d given her to represent the vulnerability she’d given him. The clothes don’t matter. Nothing matters except that he is Cophetua and she Penelophon, and no one, no one, no one can compare.

He may be called lightbringer, but she is luminous.

She smiles, a little sad, a little like she’s expecting a stewardess to open the elevator door. “Lucifer.” Only then does he realize how long he’s been staring, been still. “If this isn’t what you want—”

“You mistake me, Detective,” he replies at once, voice rough with the kind of emotion no doubt the good doctor would have a great deal to say about, but which feels foreign in his throat. “Chloe.”

The sound of her name changes the curve of her smile. Tilting her head, she reaches up to pull the weight of her hair over one shoulder. His own hand twitches in response. Then, she turns, just enough for him to see the line of delicate mother-of-pearl buttons running the length of her spine. When she glances at him over her shoulder and raises an expectant eyebrow, he moves before thinking can stop him, before doubt can curdle his anticipation, his joy.

His fingers tremble as he slips the first button free of its silken loop. She makes a tiny noise as he continues for three more, like desire but richer. Different. It’s too much. He drops his hands to his lap, and the ghost of his released breath stirs her hair and raises gooseflesh.

She turns at once, not to tempt—which he might understand—but to take his still-trembling hands in hers to comfort—which shakes him to some still, small part of his core that craves tenderness but doesn’t know what to do with it.

“Hey,” she says, all concern. For him. For _him_. “Are you okay? Really? I … can’t actually remember you ever being this quiet, for this long.”

His eyes burn with unshed tears instead of hellfire, and for the first time in his existence, he thinks the words _oh, God,_ the way humans use them, to capture a sense of awe and wonder no other words seem quite capable of. He swallows. He thinks a tear falls.

“I am…” he pauses, testing different words on his tongue before speaking. “I am feeling a … great deal.”

She laughs. Gentle, not mocking. “I think we’re supposed to.”

He can’t tell her that he has never once, in all his long, long life or with any of his many, many partners, been undone by the unbuttoning of a button or the sight of a slender neck bared to him or the word we. He can’t tell her that, though he has had sex in virtually every way humans have thought of—and many they have not—this _feeling_ is alien to him, and terrifying, and _everything_.

He, who is scornful of the very concept, wants nothing less than to worship her. And he is not certain how.

Reaching out, he rests the fingertips of his right hand against her perfect cheekbone. She smiles, and the softness of her skin invites further exploration. Her strong jaw; the column of her throat. When his questing fingers catch on the necklace he gave her, he follows the path of the chain across her collarbones and down her décolleté.

The words ‘what do you desire?’ hang on his lips, unspoken, inappropriate … and useless, in her case.

Again, he stills, he lingers too long. This time, Chloe interrupts his thoughts by pressing a kiss to his lips. He wakes, blinking.

Placing her hand under his chin, she applies just enough pressure to encourage—but not force—him to meet her gaze. He expects frustration, disappointment, but is only met with the openness he’s starting to recognize as love.

She says, very softly, very gently, “What do you desire?”

His breath catches. His lips part. The word, “You,” falls from between them before he can swallow it down.

Again, she kisses him, lingering longer this time. “You,” she echoes when she pulls away at last, pink-cheeked and breathing heavily. She shakes her hair back. One shoulder is left bare by the buttons he’d managed to undo. “You.”

Instead of waiting for him, her delicate hands, her capable hands, push his suit jacket from his shoulders. It pools behind him on the bed, but before he can free his hands, she attacks the buttons of his waistcoat, and then of his shirt. He’s aware of every gesture, every moment the skin of her hands grazes the skin her work bares.

“Close your eyes,” she breathes into his ear.

“I should be—”

“Please,” she adds, kissing his jaw.

He complies, of course, and she rewards him with a giggle. Delighted.

Almost as if she doesn’t know the lengths he’d go to for her; almost as if she doesn’t realize how desperately he loves her, wants her to be happy.

He may talk a great deal, but not all words come easily.

The warmth of her hand settling over his heart almost startles his eyes open again. When she speaks, the quiver in her voice makes him wonder if closing his eyes wasn’t as much for her as for him. “Have you ever…” she begins, a little tentative, “Lucifer. Have you ever done this before _without_ asking that question? Without _knowing_ the answer?”

He doesn’t pretend at ignorance. He shakes his head. He keeps his eyes closed, afraid—yes, afraid; he must be honest, he must not lie to himself, not now—of what her expression might reveal.

She kisses the spot between his brows where he feels a furrow forming. She kisses his temple, where another tear has escaped his control. She says, “Lucifer, can you look at me?”

Her face is very close to his—close enough for him to see her nervousness as she catches her bottom lip between her teeth. Close enough to see that he’s not the only one with tears in his eyes. She says, “I don’t know what you like best. You don’t know what I like best. We haven’t figured out yet what we like best together. This isn’t—it doesn’t have to be—I don’t _want_ it to be a one-night, perfect performance.”

“I don’t want to disappoint you.”

She doesn’t laugh. “You can’t. Even if everything goes weird and one of us farts or I get a hip cramp or you don’t know what button to push—”

“I _do_ know what _button_ to push, honestly!”

She grins, and suddenly, it’s just that. He’s Lucifer, and she’s Chloe; sometimes she’s a stick in the mud, and sometimes he drives her mad; and they’re partners because haven’t they always been?

She says, in the ridiculous voice she always uses when she’s trying to be suggestive and failing, “But do you know how to _unbutton_ these _particular_ buttons? Because you seemed to be having some difficulty and if it’s too hard, I can just—”

“Minx,” he murmurs, pulling her onto his lap.

He sleeps with her. They sleep together. And, in the morning, with dawn on her skin and in her hair, he draws her close because he can, and though his heart feels full—so full it might burst—he finds it doesn’t ache at all.


End file.
